Saturday, January 29, 2011

Timeless

Sand, more sand and mostly sand! Literally hundreds and hundreds of swirling caramel and beige sand dunes as far as the eyes could see. The slanting rays of the sun are playing havoc with sand, eking out rich shades of ochre, brown and gold.

This is the Big Nothingness, the Infinite Emptiness , the largest sand desert of them all. I was standing on the western most tip of “the great sea of sand in which no oar will ever be dipped”. From this point Sahara stretches all the way across North Africa right up to the land of the pharaohs, larger than the distance between the two coasts of America. The desert covers many countries – Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Sudan before laying the carpet under Egypt and merging with the Sinai mountain range. Some regions of this utterly desolate landscape has not seen rainfall in decades. Yet a throbbing nomadic community – Touregs, Moors and Chaamba – have made peace and deal with it daily.